MEDIUM RARE

There’s bad news and there’s bad news, but some news is so bad that readers’ or viewers’ attention does not falter, in fact they become more riveted as the story worsens and dramatic details unravel. This was the case last week when the world watched with bated breath as the object of their interest tiptoed toward an inevitable, “catastrophic implosion” – a submersible (not a submarine) carrying five male passengers who, having been warned that it could be a dangerous ride, signed page after page of waivers, as if signing their life away and paying US$250,000 each for the privilege. As it happened, it was bad news all the way. And now “there are two,” said James Cameron, director of the “Titanic” movie that made a superstar of Leonardo DiCaprio. Cameron was referring to the wreck of the “unsinkable” Titanic more than a century after she made her maiden voyage and now lies as a relic at the bottom of the ocean somewhere between the US and Canada. The other wreck is that of the submersible, a much smaller vessel named “Titan,” whose mission was a tour of the Titanic’s remains. As incredible as it may seem to nonexplorers, those tours are a commercial enterprise of which professional divers are inordinately proud. An observer said on CNN (or BBC?), “Water devours,” reminding me of a centuries-old haiku: “The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.” In our own archipelagic experience, we recall the tragic end of Doña Paz in December 1987 five days before Christmas, where only 26 of 4,000 passengers survived her collision with an oil tanker. The death toll is the biggest in postwar maritime history. Twenty-one years later, in a tragic repeat, 814 passengers of the mv Princess of the Stars died, and the bodies of 500 others were never found. Data show that after the “Princess” incident, 30 more cases at sea were reported. And yet, as pointed out by a friend who doesn’t look like a merman, we’re surrounded by lakes and rivers, we’re no. 1 in marine biodiversity, no. 1 in the number and skills of seafarers, no. 4 in shipbuilding.